The American journal of clinical hypnosis
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Hypnosis is widely used to relieve pain. Current theory emphasizes its dissociative features. Multiple personality patients can eliminate pain in the primary personality by displacing it into underlying alters. ⋯ Normal individuals, like multiple personalities and "hidden observer" subjects, can displace (dissociate) pain into "covert" ego states. The pain is not eliminated. This suggests that when we remove pain by hypnosis we may not be getting away "scot-free."